Start by carefully considering what you think you want. Then weigh your wish list against what you’ll probably pay to fulfill it. Identifying goals and thinking through available options will force some decisions—and also help you set a budget cap.

Roofing work is expensive, and, if you hire the wrong contractor, you can spend thousands of dollars too much and still get terrible work. Our ratings of area roofers will help you nail down the best roofers for your job.

Good fences cost good money. Though some homeowners opt to DIY the job, most count on fence builders to help with the design and handle the construction. We found some in the area that were highly rated by their customers; unfortunately, we also found some that weren’t held in high regard at all. And our mystery shoppers discovered huge price differences among companies bidding on the same job.

Begin by reviewing and deciding on fence type, materials, finish, height, spacing and width of slats, and post size. Also decide whether you want extras such as latticework or an electronic gate. Most fence builders provide catalogs you can examine.

Given that we received very mixed reviews for home inspection services in our surveys of local consumers, we expected some companies in our test would perform better than others. But what really miffed us was how little work many inspectors bothered to do.

Since most garden centers buy—rather than raise—most of what they sell, there is room for tremendous variation in buying ability and buying standards. The opinions we collected from consumers on garden centers reflect this big variation in quality.